The media loves a good labor stoppage. The nonstop coverage of teacher demonstrations in West Virginia earlier this year and now in Oklahoma and Kentucky proves it.

But these walkouts are more than publicity stunts. Public school teachers have enormous bargaining power, and some of the lowest paid have clearly realized it. Just as happened in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, the price of peace will come from treating teachers like the important professionals they are.

Labor strikes are high drama. Services shut down and employers are forced to take action that had been unthinkable before: Either bend to workers’ demands or try to find other ways to keep operations going (for instance, finding replacements willing to cross a picket line).

The fact that teachers — whom we rely on to instill morals in our children in addition to instructing them how to read, write and do arithmetic — walk off the job, doing so illegally, makes a teacher strike even more fascinating.

On the surface, the wave of teacher strikes that has rippled through red America over the past month looks like a labor story; an object lesson in the power of solidarity, and the hazards of underpaying workers and then leaving them no source of leverage save walking off the job. And it certainly is that kind of story — but it is also a political one. After all, public workers can only gain leverage through a strike if a significant portion of the public rallies behind their picket line. It took the fortitude of West Virginia teachers to get this strike wave started — but it required the political weakness of the GOP’s prevailing ideology to keep it rolling.

Teachers scored improbable victories in West Virginia and Oklahoma by exploiting the biggest open secret in American politics today: The Republican Party and its voters have radically different political views.

The former has made cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations its top economic priority on both the state and federal levels; the latter oppose such tax cuts by overwhelming margins. GOP office-holders have worked tirelessly (if unsuccessfully) to reduce federal spending on health care; most GOP voters would like to see such spending increased. Nearly all House Republicans have repeatedly affirmed their support for financing ever-lower taxes on the rich with draconian cuts to public investment in virtually everything but the military, including Medicare benefits; when pollsters referenced this reality to right-leaning voters in a 2012 focus group, the respondents found Paul Ryan’s agenda so absurdly offensive, they “simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing.”

When Republican primary voters choose a demagogue who evinced indifference to “free market” pieties — and support for massive infrastructure stimulus, universal health care, price controls on pharmaceuticals, and higher taxes on the rich — as their 2016 standard-bearer, many pundits were perplexed. But they shouldn’t have been. It would be far stranger if Republican voters really did feel a deep loyalty to the Ryan budget. After all, no mass constituency in any other advanced democracy on planet Earth has ever rallied behind such a cause. The GOP has not made support for tax cuts (no matter the economic conditions, geopolitical circumstances, or resulting consequences for social spending) the first principle of its domestic agenda because that is a popular and rational governing ideal — but because it is an excellent value proposition to offer to well-heeled reactionaries in search of a medium-risk, high-return investment opportunity.

To this point, the GOP has paid no great electoral price for the fact that there is no significant constituency for its economic agenda; over the past decade, Republicans have managed to grow more fanatically committed to fiscal policies that their voters find abhorrent — and more politically powerful. A variety of factors have abetted this odd achievement, not least the fact that most voters pay far less attention to the details of policy than to identity-based appeals. Through “culture war” rhetoric and legislation, the GOP has established itself as the party of rural Americans, cultural traditionalists, gun enthusiasts, and the (proudly) white and native-born. The broad appeal of this reactionary brand of identity politics (combined with copious Koch network cash, the right’s vast propaganda apparatus, and a touch of voter suppression) has allowed the Republican Party to have its fringe fiscal agenda, and its electoral majorities, too.

I'll have to read the whole article later, but the points in the quote seem so obvious to so many of us. These people keep voting against their own interests because of the cultural issues and then suffer economically. As I said on another thread, I'll bet very few of the striking teachers in Oklahoma realize that they voted for the mess they and their schools are in.

I'll have to read the whole article later, but the points in the quote seem so obvious to so many of us. These people keep voting against their own interests because of the cultural issues and then suffer economically. As I said on another thread, I'll bet very few of the striking teachers in Oklahoma realize that they voted for the mess they and their schools are in.

Republican politicians have used the identity crap for many years with great success. What is really needed is for stories like this to start permeating and seeping into places where those voters can't avoiding reading about it. They will have to be exposed to these realities over and over in order for it to sink in.

"I know that human being and fish can coexist peacefully"
--- George W Bush

The president of the Oklahoma Teachers Association said the walkouts will continue into next week as teachers demand more funding for schools, CNN reported.

Teachers from across the state shut down their schools and marched in the state's capital last week.

On Friday, more than 55 of the state's school districts were closed due to the walkouts.

Teachers are urging lawmakers to pass new legislation, arguing that schools in the state need more funding.

"I think they thought we were not going to come out in the forces that we did, especially throughout the week ... but we're holding strong, and you don't mess with teachers when we're trying to fight for our kids," Amanda Girdler, a fourth-grade teacher, told CNN.

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona teachers who have organized to push for big raises and a restoration of school funding are threatening a statewide walkout, following the lead of educators across the country, including Oklahoma where schools have been closed for more than a week.

Leaders for a new grassroots group called Arizona Educators United say they could announce a date for action at any time. The group of about 40,000 members says Gov. Doug Ducey and Republican lawmakers who control the Legislature have not responded to requests for negotiations.

Teacher and organizer Noah Karvelis said the group sees no choice but to move to walkouts.

The likely walkout is part of a wave of teacher rebellions in states led by conservative leaders. In Oklahoma, classes in the state’s biggest school districts were canceled Tuesday for the seventh day. Educators have not said when their walkout will end, but classes in Oklahoma City and Tulsa have been scrubbed for Wednesday.

“Walk-ins” planned at approximately 1,000 schools statewide are part of a grassroots movement pushing for a 20 percent raise and more than $1 billion in new education funding. Arizona’s demonstration is part of a wave of educators demanding higher pay that started in West Virginia where teachers successfully won a 5 percent raise after a statewide strike. ...

Arizona Educators United has mobilized teachers and supporters across the state through their #RedforEd campaign. In addition to a 20 percent pay bump, they’re seeking increased pay for support professionals, a permanent raise structure, and a freeze on corporate tax cuts until per-pupil spending reaches the national average.

Stephanie Terry, a 36-year-old single mother of two and a special education teacher at Fowler Elementary School in Phoenix, said she makes $36,000 annually and lives with her parents.

Simi Valley –- Teachers at one of the nation’s largest online public charter schools, California Virtual Academies (CAVA), which is affiliated with K12 Inc., a publicly traded company (LRN) focused on online learning, have reached agreement with their employer on a precedent-setting first union contract. The tentative agreement provides for student caseload caps and workload language that will help CAVA teachers better provide individual attention to students. The settlement contains increases in wages and establishes a salary schedule that will make CAVA better able to recruit and retain teachers and reduce staff turnover disruptive to learning. Teachers also made improvements in job status language and, for the first time at a K12 Inc. school, will have due process rights and binding arbitration for grievances.

“Organizing teachers in a workplace where we don’t see our peers and where the bargaining unit stretches across a state as large as California isn’t easy, and it also isn’t easy establishing a precedent-setting agreement,” said CAVA teacher and California Virtual Educators United President Brianna Carroll. “We are so proud of the hard work and commitment our teachers made in ensuring that our core values on work status, caseloads, and workload were recognized. We now have a first contract that begins the process of fixing CAVA and ensuring the success of our students and teachers. Our schools here in California and other online schools have had very little input from the teachers on the frontline. This agreement will change that and allow those who work most closely with students a greater say in shaping the curriculum and school policies.”

California Virtual Educators United was formed by CAVA teachers in 2013 and is affiliated with the California Teachers Association (CTA). Although enrollment has declined recently in the wake of news accounts of a $168 million penalty levied by the State of California against K12 Inc. for alleged fraud and financial abuse that hurt students, CAVA has enrolled as many as 15,000 students in 42 of California’s 48 counties in recent years. The teacher bargaining unit has ranged from just under 500 teachers to 750 at its peak.

In November, CVEU members voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike if the union’s bargaining team could not reach an agreement. Inspired by statewide teacher strikes in West Virginia and Oklahoma, CAVA teachers were prepared to walkout this week if an agreement had not been reached. The tentative agreement will now go to CVEU members for a ratification vote at the end of April.

Virtual charter schools, where classes are taught online, are publicly funded and often managed by for-profit education management organizations. Last year, online schools enrolled approximately 300,000 students nationwide, according to the National Education Policy Center. This is an increase from 199,000 in the 2011-2012 school year.

# # #

CVEU is a chapter of the 325,000-member California Teachers Association, which is affiliated with the 3 million-member National Education Association.

A nationwide network of rightwing thinktanks is launching a PR counteroffensive against the teachers’ strikes that are sweeping the country, circulating a “messaging guide” for anti-union activists that portrays the walkouts as harmful to low-income parents and their children.

The new rightwing strategy to discredit the strikes that have erupted in protest against cuts in education funding and poor teacher pay is contained in a three-page document obtained by the Guardian. Titled “How to talk about teacher strikes”, it provides a “dos and don’ts” manual for how to smear the strikers.

Top of the list of talking points is the claim that “teacher strikes hurt kids and low-income families”. It advises anti-union campaigners to argue that “it’s unfortunate that teachers are protesting low wages by punishing other low-wage parents and their children.” ...

The “messaging guide” is the brainchild of the State Policy Network (SPN), an alliance of 66 rightwing “ideas factories” that span every state in the nation. SPN uses its $80m war chest – funded by billionaire super-donors such as the Koch brothers and the Walton Family Foundation that flows from the Walmart fortune – to coordinate conservative strategy across the country.

Another financial backer of SPN is the billionaire DeVos family of the Amway empire. Betsy DeVos is the current education secretary in the Trump administration.

In the heart of a deeply red Oklahoma, teachers redefine the image of labor activists and inspire beleaguered colleagues in other red states. ...

Oklahoma is the hottest teacher battle in the country right now, but Kentucky and Arizona aren’t far behind. In Kentucky, the statewide teachers union is urging teachers to march on the Capitol in Frankfort on Friday after Republican Governor Matt Bevin vetoed a bill this week that would boost per-pupil funding in the state. He also signed a pension reform bill that was quickly passed by the state Legislature last month. That pension reform bill, wildly unpopular with teachers, would make pensions more like 401(k) plans. The bill’s passage sparked a massive “sickout” last month, with teachers storming the Capitol.

In Arizona, teachers are wearing red this week and holding “walk-ins,” where they stand outside the school and talk to parents and anyone who will listen about the state of their classrooms, the need for a 20 percent raise and more education funding. Like Oklahoma, Arizona has watched many of its teachers flee the state for better-paying jobs in neighboring Nevada, where a massive education reform bill promoted by Republican Governor Brian Sandoval pumped $500 million into the education budget. Arizona educators are expected to announce a date for their own massive walkout in the coming days. ...

Among Oklahoma’s biggest problems is that it can’t keep its teachers. They get trained at Oklahoma’s best universities and then they drive south to Texas, where schools promise thousands of additional dollars to attract top talent. The average salary for a teacher in Texas is $52,575, compared with $45,245 in Oklahoma, according to federal data. The Sooner State has had to issue emergency certifications to thousands of people in recent years to staff classrooms, raising concerns about qualifications. Even Oklahoma’s 2016 Teacher of the Year left the state for Texas after he led a failed ballot initiative to give teachers in the state a $5,000 raise. ...

In a video that went viral this week and has since been deleted, state Rep. Kevin McDugle, a freshman Republican, said he wouldn’t vote “for another stinking measure when (teachers) are acting the way they are acting.” Soon after, an Oklahoma second grade teacher announced that she would run for his seat. (She was not the only teacher who decided to run for office when the registration window opened this week.)

As an educator and a former Oklahoma Science Teacher, the news today left me angry. I taught in Oklahoma for only two years, and I know what those people are going through. Teaching in that "cheap cost of living" state trying to live on meager checks nearly left me broke. Bankruptcy might have been my only option had i stayed. While I was there I met some remarkable people, and I grew better at my job as an educator because of the quality people who were still there. The educators who remained were singularly dedicated to their students, and those people deserved better in every way then what they got today. When I heard they went on strike I was elated to the point of looking for gofundme's to support them. After the first week i was so proud of them, for the first time I was hopeful that those good people would be rewarded.

Then the OEA Union President Alicia Priest decided to show her true colors and backstabbed the teachers, their families, the children of Oklahoma, and in fact every chapter of *EA across the nation when she allowed the union to be what broke this revolt. Today with her actions she made the strike a pointless failure. To make matters worse the spineless president of the Oklahoma Educators Association in her released statement proved what kind of spineless weasel she was. She claimed that the strike was a certain victory for educators, i wonder does she even realize who the hell she represented. She represented teachers, and teachers aren't garden variety idiots. To support her lunacy she claimed that the progress was the $6,100 dollar raise. Does she really believe people are this stupid? That raise was voted in before the strike to try to convince the teachers to not strike. No amount of political double speak and tap dancing can dance around the fact that they had that raise prior to the work stoppage.

What this ineffectual union did was it took teachers out of the classroom and into a work stoppage. In so doing her members followed all across the state. They sacrificed, they showed up and they were an inspiration to the state and the nation. People were following this strike even in Florida. The proof is that Florida papers started printing articles about how teachers in Florida couldn't follow suit. Still people were talking about it, even here. Then she broke the back of this revolt. When she caved, she snatched failure from what was the jaws of certain victory. It was certain victory because you don't give $6,100 raises if you don't fear what a prolonged strike would bring. The politicians ignored her, and that nine day strike and all the hardships it placed on people in the communities of Oklahoma was suddenly rendered pointless. It didn't accomplish one damn thing. In fact it solidified the narrative that the way to handle workers who strike is to ignore them because they will break anyway.

She went further stating they needed to concentrate now on electing more people sympathetic to education. Does she not realize what damn state she comes from? She knows damn good and well that this won't happen, like ever in Oklahoma in my life time. This was the teacher's first and last chance to bring the political system to its knees and force the change it needed and she failed them. Instead of following the good advice of what Oklahoma legislators were begging in the rotunda to keep at it and force the legislature to move, she caved and the only chance they had at getting the raise they needed and the funding they needed is now gone. All she did was prove that the people who left Oklahoma disillusioned were right to leave. All she did was doom the state she represents to a further exodus of teachers as they still won't have the money they need to survive. All she did was validate the conservative playbook and they will cling fiercely to this example fortified in their belief that this is how you will break the unions. All she did was prove that the OEA was and is without vision or backbone and completely unworthy of the membership dues the teacher's pay into it. I would say shame on you Alicia Priest, but your the worst type of traitor. Your the useful idiot that is dooming us to a darker and more futile future.

This is how I see it, please convince me if you can that I am wrong. I need some reason to hope.

‘Throw them out!’ Kentucky teachers pack the Capitol again with message for legislators.

FRANKFORT

Thousands of teachers returned to the state Capitol Friday to keep pressure on lawmakers to fund education and to protest a new pension law that is being challenged in court.

Unlike another massive protest on April 2 that attracted thousands of protesters to the Capitol, Friday’s event was limited by Kentucky State Police for security reasons to only 500 people inside the Capitol at one time.

But they proved just as vocal with chants like “Throw them out!” State lawmakers, meeting at 10 a.m. to consider vetoes by Gov. Matt Bevin, were well aware of their presence.

Outside, thousands of teachers gathered on the front steps of the Capitol. Many in the warm, spring sun threw blankets on the lush lawn to take in the rally.

Gay Adelmann, a leader in Save Our Schools Kentucky which organized a Capitol Rotunda event, said by 10:30 a.m. that she thought the maximum number of people were inside the Capitol at 500 and an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 were outside.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — With the chants of hundreds of teachers ringing in their ears, Kentucky House lawmakers voted Friday to override the Republican governor’s veto of a two-year operating budget that increases public education spending with the help of a $480 million tax increase.

The vote came as thousands of teachers rallied inside and outside the Capitol, forcing more than 30 school districts to close as Kentucky continued the chorus of teacher protests across the country. The rally took on a festival-like atmosphere as some teachers sat in lawn chairs or sprawled out on blankets. Crosby Stills, Nash and Young’s hit “Teach Your Children” bellowed from the loud speakers.

“I don’t want to be out of my classroom. I want to be in my classroom instructing future citizens, but I’m afraid that spending at the state level is getting worse and worse, and we need those dollars for a 21st century education,” said Stephanie Ikanovic, who has been a teacher for 21 years.

The two-year operating budget includes record new spending for public education, fueled by a 50-cent increase in the cigarette tax and a 6 percent sales tax on some services including home and auto repair. But Republican Gov. Matt Bevin vetoed both the budget and the money in it, calling the bills “sloppy” and “non-transparent.” He said they would not raise enough money to cover the new spending.

As recently as Tuesday, a defiant Arizona governor refused to meet teachers threatening to strike over low pay and said he was sticking with a 1% raise proposal. Now Republican Doug Ducey has managed to scrape together the funds for what he claims is a 20% rise for teachers by 2020.

“It’s amazing what a threatened teachers’ strike in an election year can get the Republicans to do,” Democratic representative Rebecca Rios said. “I’m impressed.” ...

Ducey was vague about where the cash would come from, only saying a growing economy and lower spending in other areas unexpectedly freed up $274m this year that can be used to fund the raise. He has also said he would cancel some of the planned spending in his budget and use savings from government efficiencies.

Teachers who organized a grassroots effort that drew nearly 45,000 members were cool to the announcement, saying they wanted details before reacting and lacked trust in the governor.

"I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them," the Republican governor told reporters Friday afternoon, according to CNN affiliate WDRB.

"I guarantee you somewhere today, a child was physically harmed or ingested poison because they were home alone because a single parent didn't have any money to take care of them."

Bevin went on to say that "some were introduced to drugs for the first time because they were vulnerable and left alone."

Bevin's comments received bipartisan backlash in the state.

He also said he saw people "hanging out" and "taking the day off" as teachers gathered at the Capitol in Frankfort.

Guess he doesn't want to get the vote of any teacher ever again.

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

FRANKFORT, Ky. — Three years ago, Robin Cooper voted for Kentucky Republican Gov. Matt Bevin. On Saturday, she vowed not to do it again.

The occupational therapist in Kentucky’s second largest school district has been one of the thousands of educators protesting at the state Capitol in recent weeks to oppose changes to their pension system and to ask lawmakers for more school funding. ...

They lost the pension fight, but Friday more than 30 school districts across the state closed so teachers could travel to the Capitol and ask Republican lawmakers to override Bevin’s veto of a two-year operating budget that included increased classroom spending. They did. Bevin responded by guaranteeing somewhere a child had been sexually assaulted, ingested poison or used illegal drugs because they were left home along by single parents who could not afford to find child care on short notice.

“This is not what I would have voted for had I known he was going to harass and try to ridicule and try to intimidate teachers,” Cooper said. “That makes me second guess his character and his vision for the Kentucky that I want.”

After electing a Republican governor in 2015 and giving the party full control of the state legislature for the first time in 2016, it seemed the GOP had solidified its grip on Kentucky for years to come. But the legislature’s rush to change the state’s troubled public pension system, coupled with Bevin’s burn-the-bridges approach to politics, have led to a wave of protests and prompted at least 40 current and former teachers to run for public office this year — most of them Democrats.

The Governor of Kentucky is convinced (without any tangible evidence) that at least one child was molested because of the teachers' strike - the theory being that the child was left home alone by parents who had to work during the strike.

Assuming this theory is true, this does not indict the teachers as much as the parents for not having made some arrangement for a strike which was long expected. More to the point, every day children are left home alone between the hours of (approx.) 3:00 pm, when school lets out, and 5:30 or 6:00 when parents get home from their jobs. The kids are also likely to be left home alone on federal/state holidays when the schools are closed but most adults still have to go to work. And imagine what happens during Xmas vacation and summer vacation.

Perhaps the schools of Kentucky (and elsewhere) should go year-round, and have classes going all day to 5:00 or 6:00, to minimize the risk of children being home alone.

There are also weather-related school cancellations pretty much every year (Kentucky's been getting a lot of ice storms this year.) Funny how he's not worried about kids getting assaulted then. What a complete jerk.

It seems to me that the blame would fall more on the parents than the teachers, because the parents failed to make arrangements for their kids when the strike was predicted in advance.

Of course, many children are home alone between the hours (approx.) of 3:00 (when school lets out) and about 6:00 (when parents get home from work). And also most federal/state holidays, when the schools are closed but most adults have to go to work. And Xmas vacation and summer vacation.

Maybe the Governor of Kentucky (and other Governors) ought to back the idea of year-round schools, with classes running from 8:00 to 6:00. It might help the kids and it definitely would help the teachers to be reclassified as full-time non-temp employees.